


If We Haven't Got Nightingales, Glenn Miller Will Suffice

by copperbadge



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Anthropomorphism - Freeform, F/M, M/M, Music, TARDIS - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-03-14
Updated: 2008-03-14
Packaged: 2017-11-25 09:06:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/637293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/copperbadge/pseuds/copperbadge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Gerald Carter is distinctly annoyed, Ianto Jones goes exploring, Lisa Hallet is the cause of a falling-out, Owen Harper contemplates new digs, Jack Harkness has sex (with architecture), Gwen Cooper weds, and Glenn Miller plays.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If We Haven't Got Nightingales, Glenn Miller Will Suffice

"Harkness! I say, Harkness!"

Jack stumbled into the corridor quickly, silently cursing the darkness and turning to see who was calling him in the dim subterranean tunnel. 

"Down here, sir," he called. Gerald lifted a lamp, squinting.

"What on earth are you doing here?" he asked. "I thought you'd gone to bed hours ago but you weren't in the barracks-room."

"N -- well, no," Jack said. "I got restless."

Gerald arched an eyebrow. "Harkness, sooner or later 'restless' is going to stop being an excuse." He hung the lantern on a nearby hook and crossed his arms. "Were you talking to the walls again?"

Gerald was ten years younger than Jack had been, the first time he'd died, and that had been at least four decades ago. Still, he had a way of making Jack feel about four years old. Had to be the accent. 

"What is it you expect to hear back?" Gerald asked quietly. 

"Don't know," Jack lied. 

"What do you say to the walls?"

Jack shrugged, kicking the dust around with his boot. 

"Does it help?"

He nodded.

"Jack -- " 

He jerked his head up at the sound of his name -- Gerald wasn't on first-names basis with Jack, had never called him Jack since Gerald took the post as Torchwood Three's leader. 

"I've come to fetch you. There's -- it's coming over the wireless. You were right," he said softly.

"War?" Jack asked. 

"Germany is marching through Belgium on their way to Paris. Great Britain will be at arms," Gerald said. "Come up; we'll be working late tonight. The Crown will want to know what we have that can help."

"Of course," Jack said, following as Gerald took down the lamp and turned and led the way back into the open atrium of the Hub. 

Later, after Gerald had shouted at him that Torchwood needed him more than the war did and Harriet had kissed him on the cheek for being a very brave boy and joining up and Gerald had shouted some more and called him some very foul names, Jack snuck down one last time, into the very belly of the Hub, and curled up in a corner where two walls met. 

He realised he was scared to go to war. He couldn't even die, it was stupid, but he was scared all the same.

"Hey," he said softly, resting his forehead against the wall, leaning sideways. "You know the drill, sweetheart. I've got to go away for a while. Four years, well, maybe five. There's this war, see, and a lot of people are going to die, so I've got to run away and try to save a few."

He raked his fingers through the chips of tile and mortar on the floor, smiling.

"I'll bring you back a present, though. I'll bring you back a gutsy Wren, or maybe a smart soldier boy." ( _But it was Gerald and Harriet who brought her a soldier boy, wasn't it_ ). "Or something nice from Paris, when we get there. Don't be mad at me?"

The pulse under his body was steady and reassuring; _never, never, never._

***

_From: Harkness, Jack_   
_To: UNIT distribution, Prime Minister, Torchwood Four distribution_   
_Re: Report requested: fatality incident, Suzie Costello._

_Ladies, Gentlemen, Officers,_

_I've received no less than five requests for a full report on the death of Suzie Costello three weeks ago, and I suspect highly that most of you are just morbid gossips. We are still investigating Ms. Costello's suicide in relation to an artefact of dangerous origin and I'm not telling you anything else, and no, you can't have the artefact._

Jack sighed. First drafts were always the hardest. You couldn't call the PM a morbid gossip, even if she was. Still, it was satisfying to pretend he'd actually be able to send an email like that. 

He looked up at the rap of knuckles on a door frame, saw Ianto standing like a good-looking shadow just outside, holding a sheaf of papers, with a blueprint-case slung over one shoulder.

"Jack, have you got a moment?"

"Please," Jack said, before Ianto was even done with the request. "Distract me."

He had an oddly _eager_ look on his face; Ianto didn't usually display so much emotion openly, but he came into the office without his usual hesitation and spread out a handful of rag-paper sketches on Jack's desk. 

"You've been burrowing around in the Hub again," Jack said. 

"Researching. In my own time," Ianto protested. "Have you noticed this?"

He picked up one of the sketches, an elderly schematic of a Hub sub-level, drawn and dated _1948_ by now-dead hands, hands Jack had known once. 

( _Perhaps he was too distracted by that to wonder why Ianto was exploring so deep, and now the memory is sullied slightly, knowing that even as he pored over the paper Ianto was perverting its use to his own ends. It made Jack a little sad._ )

"The way the Hub is laid out," Ianto continued. 

"Like a _hub_?" Jack asked.

"On the compass points. Every major extension from the atrium runs aligned to magnetic north, parallel or bisectional," he said. "So if you have a compass you always know how to get back."

"As long as the compass is working," Jack replied, sifting through the papers. 

"It's highly precise. How old is the Hub?" Ianto asked curiously.

"No-one knows." Not quite a lie. "The archives date back to the founding of Torchwood, but those could have been brought in later. The architecture up here's early twentieth century, but down below..." 

"Yah. Hard to identify a period when your style is _big stone blocks_."

Jack nodded and shuffled the papers together, oddly glad that Graham's drawings were still intact, that some new man was finding them useful. Graham had liked to be of use. In that he was not unlike Ianto, though far less diffident. He handed them back to Ianto wordlessly. 

"It's all right, isn't it?" Ianto asked.

This was when Jack should have seen, perhaps. Ianto's hesitation and anxiety over what really amounted to no more than spelunking in the depths of the Hub. Ianto's keeness to seek out ingress and egress points. Ianto's thirst for knowledge of the _power system_ of all deathly dull things. This was when he should have asked what it was exactly that Ianto was hoping to find, which would in turn have led to more hedging, which would have inspired his suspicion and maybe the whole mess with Lisa wouldn't have gone down the way it did.

"Just don't get stuck eighteen storeys down when we get a call," Jack said, and sent him on his way. 

After all, what harm could he come to? 

***

The blood was scrubbing off the metal pretty well, Jack thought, but it was bound to stain some of the cement, and the pool below the fountain would need a few cycles before the cloudy red swirls disappeared entirely. He'd have to check on Myfanwy, too; she'd probably have whined and screeched if she was injured, but it never hurt to be safe. 

"He's tucked up at home," Gwen announced, as the cogwheel door rolled back and the cage alerts sounded her entry. "How's cleaning going?"

"Rotten," Owen called from the medical bay. "What a fuckin' bloodbath."

"The computers are all right," Tosh said, trying to be optimistic. Jack sat back on his heels and threw the brush in the bucket of water. 

"Did you drug him?" he asked.

"You told me to," Gwen said, looking a trifle ashamed of herself. "He fell asleep pretty quickly. You're washing the floor."

"Yeah, well, we're down our entire support staff," Jack said. Nobody really was ready to look anyone else in the eye, but he'd caught the sidelong looks as he'd carried the bucket out and started to wash the blood away. He'd had half a mind to make Ianto do it, but a hundred and fifty years teaches you to the nerve-ending how close you can bring someone to snapping without breaking them entirely, and no-one should have to wash their dead lover's blood off the cement. 

He rubbed sweat out of his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt. "He say anything?"

Gwen shook her head. 

"Do we actually care?" Owen asked.

"Owen," Tosh murmured.

"No, honestly, do we? I can handle being lied to or being attacked by chicks in metal bathing suits or Ianto having a nervous breakdown but all three's a bit much, wouldn't you say?" Owen crossed his arms. "Did you retcon him?"

"Just sedatives," Jack said. "He'll be suspended."

" _Suspended_?" Owen's mouth worked its way around the word, shocked. "Jack, we're talking about an averted apocalypse here, and all he could think of was his shag-buddy."

"She was his girlfriend and he loved her," Jack said tiredly. "Love screws you up. Go home, Owen, I'll deal with this my own way. Tosh, Gwen, you too. We'll fix the rest in the morning."

One by one they went, Owen muttering darkly, Tosh with a sympathetic touch on his shoulder, Gwen still twisting her hands together, anxious and uncertain. He doubted any of them would sleep particularly well. 

He looked around, dumped the soapy water across the cement to let it soak and dry, and dried his hands. Sat down on the couch, staring up at the struts supporting the walkway above.

"So," he said aloud. "What the hell was all that about?"

Jack wasn't an idiot. He was, in fact, brilliant and sexy and a time traveller. He'd been one of the Doctor's Companions, so he knew a TARDIS when he saw one. And a TARDIS can, at least in the face of a tiny human brain, take care of herself. So Jack hadn't fretted about Ianto's explorations; the Hub would ensure he never ran afoul of anything dangerous, nor damaged the structure in any way. 

The Hub _should_ have ensured that the minute a Cyberman entered her chambers, ten kinds of alarm went off. 

Ominous silence from the Hub. Perhaps she was sulking too, she hated lockdown, but the hell with that. She'd let the boy bring a Cyberman here. She'd _protected_ him. 

"Help me out here," he continued, reaching one hand behind his head to touch the tiles. "You gave him access to your power lines and you didn't tell me anything. Hell, I liked him too, but just because he was nice to you doesn't mean you're supposed to open wide, you know."

The lights flickered.

"Don't play those games with me." Jack sighed and closed his eyes. Flashes of the past two hours zipped through his brain; the impact on his jaw when Ianto punched him, Gwen's wide frightened eyes in the conversion unit, Myfanwy screaming and tearing at the Cyberman while Ianto begged him to have some fucking mercy. 

"Why would you do that?" he breathed, not expecting a concrete answer. "Okay, so he was desperate. You're supposed to be the enemy of the Cybermen. And you're supposed to be on my side. Or..."

Horrified thought.

"Did you think she could be saved?" he asked. 

Silence.

" _Could_ she have been saved?"

He opened his eyes. Tosh's computer was running a diagnostic, progress bar blinking on every screen, but one by one they flickered out. Obvious enough. No more Lisa, Lisa all gone. 

"I can forgive him," he said, too tired to lie about neverending grudges. "He's young and stupid. I just don't get why you picked him over me."

No answer. He trailed his fingers along the tile as he rose and made his way to the stairs, climbing to his office.

***

_She still loves Ianto, despite the Cyberman in the basement and his role in opening the Rift that cut a great bloody gash through her consciousness. She loves Gwen and Tosh too because, while they may have helped cause the damage, they also helped rebuild her after. She even loves Owen, because Jack forgave him, and because Owen had no small hand in decorating her after Jack left._

_She whispers to Jack in the half-sleep he takes early in the mornings; whispers about Owen fussing over paint for her walls, polish for her tiles, and about all the funny things he says when he thinks nobody's listening. She giggles at Ianto, even now always trying to map out the stretch of her corridors, venturing further on each journey but always finding one more door. She coos over Gwen, bringing her young man to meet them all, and unashamedly adores Tosh with her gentle touch and love of the computer for its own sake._

_But Jack is her constant, her lover, her partner, as she sits placidly under a crust of earth. The others are a snap of brief electricity in her long life but Jack is eternal -- a joyful, vital human replacement for her long-dead Chrestophaletulin, her beloved Time Lord. Jack's left her, of course, sometimes for years on end, but he always tells her he's going and where, and why. He always promises to come back to her._

_And then one time he doesn't._

***

"I'm telling you, it's brilliant," Ianto said, sitting across Tosh's desk from her, devouring her leftover pizza and sketching pictures in the air with his hands. "It's ten levels down, but you have to take this one specific set of stairs to get there. There _might_ be a split level at that point."

"That's going to bugger our map," Tosh chewed on her lip. 

"It's that northern side of the east branch, there's those three sets of stairs. If you take the far one, down three levels -- that's ten, isn't it?"

Jack listened, unseen, lurking in a doorway nearby; not much got Ianto this excited. He was almost jealous and he was definitely annoyed, because he'd wanted coffee and someone to talk to three hours ago and this was all the Hub's doing. 

"Yes," Tosh said. "You said it's like a cavern?"

"Mmf," Ianto swallowed a bite of pizza. "Beams in the ceiling. I said it's cavernous. It's obviously manmade. But it's all fitted with wood, like they built it -- I don't know, centuries ago."

"Not that deep, they didn't."

"I know! And it's filled with, uh, stuff."

"Stuff."

"There are animals," Ianto lowered his voice. "Alien animals. Stuffed and mounted, you know. And sculptures. And coats of arms on the walls. Look, I did sketches."

He passed a pad of paper across to her, and she promptly scanned it with the handheld and started running a recognition program. Jack smiled in spite of himself. Good Tosh. 

"Do you think it's some kind of Rift museum?" she asked. 

"Maybe! I'm sure I've never seen any of those things catalogued."

"It's a trophy room," Jack said, pushing away from the doorframe. Both of them looked at him almost guiltily.

"Would have come and told you, sir," Ianto said hastily. "After lunch."

"Let me guess," Jack said, tapping his lips. "You'd never noticed there were three stairways before."

Ianto glanced at Tosh, who called up the map they'd been building. There were only two stairways in the plan.

"And when you got to the bottom of the stairs it was the only door that would open -- and then it locked behind you."

Ianto blinked at him.

"But the lights were on. And after you'd explored for a while, you found the door hadn't locked, just jammed a little."

"You've been there, then," Ianto said.

"No. And you won't ever again, probably. The Hub has her secrets, you know."

"What do you mean?" Tosh asked. 

"Do me a favour," Jack said, stepping closer to Ianto, tipping his chin up with a knuckle. "Don't go exploring for a few weeks, okay?"

Ianto nodded, eyes wide and confused. "You think it's dangerous?"

"I want you where I can find you if I need you."

Tosh gave Ianto an eyebrow that Jack was not unaware of, but Ianto was a stoic when it came to the gossip about him and the Captain. Jack made it worth his while, after all. 

And Jack'd had enough of doors jamming shut on him and the computers not working for him and the telephones cutting off mid-call. It wasn't fair for the Hub to start hiding Ianto from him, because Ianto wasn't a toy and if he were he'd be Jack's toy and Jack refused to be having with the Hub taking his toys. Even Gwen didn't sulk this long about Jack haring off after the Doctor, and Gwen was a world-class sulker when she wanted to be. 

So he went to his office and drew his blinds in order that his team might not see him talking to the ceiling. 

"Okay," he said, lifting his face and holding up a finger. "This has got to end. I will admit," he began to pace, "That she was a tart. A public-call-boxy tart. She seduced me away and I didn't say goodbye or tell you where I was going. But she got hurt in all this too, you know! And it wasn't like it was a picnic for me. So I swear to you tonight I will tell you everything, but honey if you keep messing with me I will pick up and move this whole operation to some very modern underground lair beneath Millennium Stadium, and then you will be _sorry._ "

There was a cough, discreet and polite, from the doorway. 

"I know I shut that door," Jack said without turning.

"Not my fault, it was open when I got here," Owen replied. "Are you talking to your light fixture?"

"No."

"Is there really a secret underground lair beneath Millennium Stadium?"

"Owen, I am not in the mood."

"Right. Well, just to let you know, we're all going out. So you're welcome to come for a pint, or you can continue to monologue to an empty office."

Jack got a grip on himself. Figuratively.

"I'll be down in a minute," he said. When Owen was gone, he looked up again.

"Stop it!" he hissed.

***

_He gets up late at night, smelling like smoke from the pub and alcohol from a single glass of scotch in his office. His new boy is asleep in his bed -- she never begrudges him that, though she likes some more than others -- and he wanders the corridors in his bare feet and trousers, braces hanging down, always with one hand on the wall. He walks until he is deep inside, near the casing where her heart lies. He's never quite found it, but he can sense when he comes close, and that's enough for both of them. It wouldn't be right for him to find it. Her Time Lord should be the only one to ever stand in her glory, and her Time Lord is dead._

_Still, she loves Jack, and is glad to see him here again even as she tries to sulk. He is so warm where he leans, so very full of life, and at the same time so very sad. It reminds her of when he comes home to her from War, all hollow angles and darkness inside._

_He slides down until he's sitting, head resting on knees, naked back pressed to her, and begins to speak. She isn't certain really what he means by any of it (these humans use very simple words she doesn't always understand) but she knows he suffered and was lonely and someone he loves does not love him back, and he's very sorry he went away. As comfort she tries to tell him about the children and how they all missed him, but that just makes him more unhappy. So she warms to him and the walls hum softly against his body, and she tries to give him what joy she can as a forgiveness._

_He seems to like that; he arches and speaks to her in the strange babbling language he speaks with the boys and girls he keeps closest, and she can feel the good chemicals flood his brain as he writhes on the floor with his back against the wall._

_When he finally pulls away he is tired and happy and forgiven and he goes back to bed without so much darkness inside._

*** 

Christine, that was her name. 

Jack had been trying to remember it ever since the end of the wedding party, when he'd gathered up the rest of the team and told them to do their best work. On his way to help Tosh start sifting through the mobiles to make sure no photos were taken, he'd snatched up a handful of confetti from a reception table without thinking about it and shoved it in his pocket for later. He remembered Christine when he did it, at least her face -- her name had eluded him until Tosh was off and Owen and Ianto were both safely home and he was driving silently back to the Hub. 

Early seventies. Christine was mod and slick and like Charlie's Angels before Charlie's Angels existed, and she had sharp eyes for details. Like how her boss was a trophy-taker; scraps of paper here, bits of fabric there, little things. Flowers, even though Jack hadn't at the time had anyone to give flowers to. Never from crime scenes; he just took little things, when they were out having a drink or celebrating or something. She was the first to ever catch him at it, and he hadn't been so thoroughly embarrassed since Gerald found out he talked to walls. 

"Glitter is pretty, but you know you can buy it," she'd said, catching him scraping some off the table at Liam's kid's christening party. A Torchwood baby; rare treasures, much adored by people who normally spent most of their time scowling and making dark jokes about the apocalypse. 

"It isn't for me," Jack had replied, before he'd thought about it.

"Oh? Finally find yourself a girl, and she just isn't sparkly enough?"

He'd smiled. "Something like that."

But of course Christine couldn't let a thing go. She was like that. "Honestly, Jack. What are you going to do with a pocketful of glitter?"

"It's...to remember it by."

"Like the flowers you pick up?"

He'd winced, then grinned and held up the glitter on his palm and blown it all over her to distract her, which worked; she shrieked, laughed, and picked glitter off her tits for days (which was fun to watch). 

If she ever saw the remains of the second handful of glitter that he blew all over the Hub that evening, she never said anything.

And now here he was again, coming home to the Hub with a pocketful of treasure for his beautiful girl. He stopped inside the threshold and blew the confetti everywhere. The Hub, in reply, seemed to warm under his feet as he walked to his office with intent. 

He didn't dig out the photographs often -- especially before he found the Doctor again, it was too painful -- but after returning he'd found a kind of peace in seeing himself in that hot, slightly itchy frock coat, posed carefully with his wife, so many years ago now but still immediate because if he looked through the Rift just right, everything that had happened to him was still happening. Somehow he was at once traveling with the Doctor and Rose, marrying Margaret, getting slapped for kissing Graham, studying temporal physics at the Time Agency, flirting with Harriet, blowing glitter at Christine, and lying with Ianto in his too-small bed. 

He sighed and replaced the lid on the tin. No doubt he was also kissing people he hadn't met yet, fighting with people who hadn't been born yet, eating food that hadn't grown yet, meeting aliens who didn't exist yet. That was the problem with time. There was too goddamn much of it.

He was about to put the box back in the drawer when there was a click, and then the sound of music; his turntable was switched off and the computers were powered down, but somewhere in the Hub, Glenn Miller was playing. 

He turned to the glass and looked out; perhaps Tosh had come back to the Hub for something, or Ianto had followed him home. Ianto had that habit. 

Instead he saw a woman standing in the middle of the big high atrium, looking up at him. Dark brown skin, dark hair, bright blue eyes; a dress straight out of a wartime fashion catalogue, deep gold and glittering. 

_That certain night, the night we met_   
_There was magic abroad in the air_   
_There were angels dining at the Ritz_   
_And a nightingale sang in Berkeley Square_

Well. Who was he to refuse a lady a dance. 

He clattered down the stairs, feeling oddly awkward, but she didn't move or disappear, just held out her hand. He was going to make a quip about mysterious strangers and familiar jazz, but when he touched her, he _knew._ And before he could pull her close, he studied her face.

"Is that you?" he asked.

"It's me," she said, and smiled at him.

_I may be right, I may be wrong_   
_But I'm perfectly willing to swear_   
_That when you turned and smiled at me_   
_A nightingale sang in Berkeley Square_

She danced well, but he knew she would. They'd been dancing with each other, around and through each other, for a hundred years. If they couldn't find a rhythm with each other by now, they were probably both doomed. 

"Thank you for the confetti," she said, letting him lift her a little to twirl her feet out over the pool.

"I never leave a lady wanting."

She laughed. "I believe that, Captain Jack." 

_The moon that lingered over London Town_   
_Puzzled me, he wore a frown_

"Did you like the flowers -- "

"I always like your flowers."

_How could he know we two were so in love_   
_The whole darned world seemed upside down_

"Why tonight?" he asked. "There were a thousand other nights -- "

"Physics," she replied, and he groaned. 

"Kill the romance, sweetheart!"

"Sorry," she said, laughing. "A perfect fracture in the Rift at just the right place, the proper vibration of molecules and atoms, and the confluence of spirit and memory that you, poor kiddo, can't even begin to comprehend. All coming together at just the right moment to bring you to me, Jack Harkness, and me to you."

_The streets of town were paved with stars_   
_It was such a romantic affair_   
_And as we kissed and said goodnight_   
_A nightingale sang in Berkeley Square_

"For how long?"

"Long enough for a dance."

He twirled her happily. "Long enough for me, then."

"I should hope so! I'm not won over so easily," she replied. 

"I'll just have to keep trying, then." He lifted a hand from her hip to stroke her cheek. She felt so real, so human and warm. 

_How strange it was, how sweet and strange_   
_There was never a dream to compare_   
_With that hazy, crazy night we met_   
_When a nightingale sang in Berkeley Square._

"I've loved you since the moment I saw you. Did you feel it?"

"I knew you were different," she replied. "Do you love me very much?"

"Very much."

"That's good. I love you too. And your sweet boys and girls. But mostly you."

"Wouldn't have it any other way."

The Captain danced, always youthful, always beautiful, always alive; and in his arms the TARDIS danced too, in perfect step and perfect time, matched pace for pace with her Companion. 

_And like an echo far away_   
_I know 'cause I was there_   
_A nightingale sang in Berkeley Square_


End file.
